In his 10 years in the NBA, LeBron has played 34 regular-season games against Pierce and the Boston Celtics, compared to just 20 against Kobe's Los Angeles Lakers.

On top of that, James and Pierce have met in the playoffs four times, playing a five- and a six-game series, and two seven-game series against each other.

That's 25 playoff games going head-to-head, all coming since 2008.

You can point to key moments in LeBron's career that came against the Celtics, while his games against Kobe's Lakers have been relatively exciting, just not nearly as important to his career as a whole.

In fact, very few games between the two stick out as actual "showdowns," unless you're counting the Christmas Day games that were only showdowns because of the unbridled hype involved.

When you tick down the list of important Celtics-Heat and Celtics-Cavs games over the last decade, they're in another league than any Lakers-LeBron matchup that may have come in that same time frame.